To assess the effect of Cigna’s investment in leadership and global acumen, Chief Learning Officer Karen Kocher examined promotion rates, global movement rates and job performance for the program participants. She also used Net Promoter Score, a common customer satisfaction measurement tool to gauge internal program satisfaction.
Beyond that, learning leaders evaluate executive education program engagements in a number of other ways including:
Leadership competency modeling: Executive education programs are often designed to develop specific skills the organization has said are essential. Learning leaders can survey participants’ bosses and managers three to six months after an engagement to see if they observed a change in knowledge, skills and abilities.
Action learning projects: Many executive education programs include action learning projects, focused on strategic organizational issues. Teams generally report their recommendations for these projects to senior leaders within the organization who can then provide the learning leader with a qualitative assessment of the engagement’s success.
Individual development plan: Programs often include an individual leadership development and/or cohort leader-to-leader component, said Karl Johnson, senior vice president of leadership consulting at Full Circle Group. This typically includes a 360-degree assessment, executive coaching and an individual development plan. While the assessment results aren’t shared, he said the plan should be. “The CLO may then choose to survey boss/managers of participants three to six months after the engagement to determine how much progress participants have made against the goals described in their” individual development plans.
Additional organizationwide program impact measurements, usually owned by talent management leaders, include succession planning metrics, employee engagement surveys and employee retention metrics.
